The Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy is inviting people to take up a quest: Hike 100 miles on its trails, and the nonprofit will give you a patch. 

And while the group is known for its grueling 34-miles-in-one-day (this year on June 24) Challenge that covers the entire Rachel Carson Trail, you don’t have to do it in in big chunks or even just on that trail. You can do bits and pieces throughout the North Hills and beyond at your own pace, and you have 365 days from signing up to complete the mileage on the free printable log they’ll give you.

“We thought it was a quick and easy way to get people out there,” says Donna Stolz, the group’s volunteer coordinator. She also plans to use the information participants submit “to get a a sense of where people are spending their time on the trail and when.”

Questers can count the miles they walk on that main trail as well as on the Harmony Trail and the Baker Trail, all of which the RCTC is working to connect to each other and to other green spaces. You can even count trail work and training days for the Challenge, and earn “karma” points toward getting a spot in that very popular long-distance event (there also now are 18- and 8-mile legs) that’s in its 21st year. 

Ms. Stolz acknowledges this promotion is like the North Country Trail Association’s Hike 100 Challenge, the first of which she completed last year, and she’s doing it again this year. She also is doing her group’s Quest 100, having been the first of about two dozen people to sign up on the first day last Tuesday. 

She looks forward to the day when, thanks to initiatives such as RCTC’s “Many Trails — One Community,” hikers will be able to start on Pittsburgh trails and continue on the North Country National Scenic Trail onto the Appalachian Trail, or walk West to North Dakota and beyond. “Eventually — hopefully — all these things will be connected, and that will be amazing.”

Register at rachelcarsontrails.org/quest100. 

Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.

First Published: March 25, 2017, 4:00 a.m.